6. M4297
£10,500
Description
Chinese porcelain blue and white dish with flat everted rim, painted in the centre with two bearded scholars seated on a rocky promontory looking out to the distance, beside an overhanging willow tree with birds in flight beneath the sun, encircled by a double ring, the border with thirteen roundels each of three leaves, the underside with three jewels.
8 1⁄2 inches, 21.5 cm diameter.
Four-character mark of Tianqi within a double ring and of the period, 1621-1627.
Provenance & Additional Information
- Purchased at Shokokai Auction, June 2016.
- Included and illustrated by T. Edo Inouye & Son, Oriental Art in their exhibition of Ko-sometsuke, Collected and Selected Seventy-Seven Dishes, 2017, no. 67.
- Sold by T. Edo Inouye & Son, Tokyo, 28th February 2017.
- Included by Marchant in their exhibition of Kosometsuke & Shonzui, 2024, no. 6, pp. 26/27.
- No other identical dish appears to be published.
- A related dish of this size with two scholars seated in a landscape with different medallions on the border, also Tianqi mark and period, together with another with standing scholars, are illustrated by Masahiko Kawahara in Ko-sometsuke, Monochrome Section, nos. 579 & 580, p. 147; another with flowers, also Tianqi mark and period, was included by Marchant in their exhibition of Two Hundred Years of Chinese Porcelain 1522-1722, 1998, no. 25, p. 42.
- Smaller Tianqi marked dishes with medallions on the border are well known. Herbert Butz and Masahiko Kawahara illustrate one in the exhibition of Chinesische Porzellane des 17. Jahrhunderts fur Japan, Collection of Sammlung Georg Weishaupt, Staatliche Museum, Berlin, 1996, no. 11, pp. 44/5; another with a Tianqi mark was included by Marchant in their exhibition of Ming Porcelain for the Japanese Market, Ko-sometsuke and Ko-akai, 2008, no. 25, pp. 52/3.
- A larger dish with a warrior and identical leaf medallions on the border, Tianqi mark and period, was included by Marchant in their exhibition of Ming Blue and White: Jiajing-Chongzhen, Including Dated Examples, 2004, no. 59, pp. 80/81.
- The design of scholars beside overhanging willow with three willow sprays is a recurring theme. A Tianqi marked saucer dish of this size with similar willow is illustrated by Sir Michael Butler, Margaret Medley and Stephen Little in Seventeenth Century Chinese Porcelain from the Butler Family Collection, 1990, no. 10, p. 48. It is amusing to note that there were probably very few people who wrote the marks on pieces during the reign of Tianqi, most marked pieces have very similar characteristics to the calligraphy.
- The medallion, mon, on the border closely relates to that of the Tokugawa family who ruled Japan from the 17th century.
Condition
- good condition, mushukui to the rim